5 Black Women Were Told to Golf Faster. Then the Club Called the Police.

(New York Times) – What started out as a relaxing day at a Pennsylvania golf course turned into an ugly confrontation between the white men who run the club and five black women who were playing there.

It had echoes of other recent incidents, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia and a Waffle House in Alabama, in which black customers found themselves in racially charged disputes. Once again, the police were summoned. Once again, a video spread widely on social media and drew national attention.

On Saturday in a largely white suburban community in Dover Township, York County, the women began playing at Grandview Golf Club before being told that they were moving too slowly…

A disturbing yet nonetheless relevant aspect to this story is that police were called. It was a seemingly disproportionate reaction to a nonviolent disagreement over an organizational policy, not a criminal act. Fueled by bias and other factors, systemic oppression perpetuates conditions through which patterns of race and gender discrimination, as well as other forms of identity discrimination persist. Diversity climate studies are an essential step in understanding the inherent strengths an organization has on diversity issues and how those strengths can be leveraged to make further improvements.